This is a synopsis of the current state of the Middle East conflict as concluded by a 42-page research report. The entire report can be obtained by sending an email to ameqventures@yahoo.com.

1) The Core and Essence of the Middle East conflict
For more than 75 years, western diplomats have been coming up with peace initiatives to solve the Arab Israeli conflict. Yet they always fail.

Why? What keeps the Middle East conflict going?

If we are going to devise a solution, we must first understand why the conflict continues to exist. To do this, we have to view the situation from the top down, rather than from the bottom up.

This is completely opposite to the way most Jews and Arabs have been conditioned to look at the situation. Jews focus on the damage Arab/Palestinians cause, and believe that damage to be the cause of the conflict, when it is really only a result of it. They view the conflict and its origins from the bottom up. Arabs/Palestinians concentrate on the damage Israel causes and believe this to be the cause of the conflict, when it is really only a result of it. They too relate to the situation from the bottom up.

To understand what really causes the Middle East conflict to continue, one must look at the issue from the top down.

To get a more accurate picture of what lies behind the continued existence of the conflict, lets acknowledge these five factors which serve to perpetuate rather than solve the problem:

1) The vested interests of the Foreign Elite (FE): There is a third entity in the conflict in addition to the Israelis and the Arabs: the foreigners (in order of importance, the US, Britain, Russia, China, France, Germany). Without them, there would be no Middle East conflict because it is the foreign influence that keeps the situation from being resolved. Unfortunately, both Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews believe they are each others worst enemy without considering the third element the foreigners that is the enemy of both. The thing that Arabs and Jews have most in common is this common enemy, yet the leaders on both sides (not being legitimate or independent) tell their people that the other side is their number one enemy. Hence the conflict continues.

2) Control of Middle East oil: The foreigners interfere in the Arab-Israeli conflict in order to exploit and control the vast petroleum resources in the region. If there were no oil, there would be no petrodollars to recycle; the foreigners would have no reason to dominate the region.

3) Weapons sales: If there was a worldwide ban on arms sales to the Middle East, there would be no more radical Arab dictators with modern arms. If the foreigners stopped selling advanced weaponry to nations of the Middle East, the conflict would end.

4) The mainstream media: If the mainstream media in the West stopped reporting on the search for peace in the Middle East,peace would soon be found. By keeping the regions unstable image alive, the media, as the sole source of information by which people can formulate their perceptions, provide an excuse for the foreigners to interfere, and at the same time serve to convince everyone that these western nations want peace, despite the fact that they have been seeking it for over 50 years, in vain. The media never question the intentions or agendas of the FE. The media thus provide the glue which keeps the conflict going. Without the mainstream media constantly reporting on the conflict, there would be peace, as everyone would forget that the Middle East is unstable and thus in need of stabilizing via new peace initiatives.
5) Corrupt national leadership of both sides: It isn't peace between Arabs and Jews that interests the FE, but rather the continuation of the conflict. The way they do that is by corrupting/controlling the national leaders of both sides. The reason why legitimate, popular leaders are not at the helms of countries in the Middle East is because the FE will topple any leader who doesn't cater to their desires before the needs of their own people. If Middle East leaders are selected and deemed popular by their own people, the FE will demonize them as radicals/extremists,terrorist leaders or enemies of peace,and thus de-legitimize them in the world arena. How can genuine co-existence take hold if the leaders of both sides are more interested in pleasing their foreign masters than their own peoples?

Unless these five basic factors are understood, the true causes that extend the conflict will never be understood. Instead, each side will go on blaming the other seeking to take the high moral ground and convince their own people and those from abroad that they are right, and the other side is wrong. This will lead only to more death and destruction.

The technique is called divide and rule,and it has been a favorite of the FE for decades.It needs to be understood that the reason why the Middle East conflict continues to exist is because foreign elements desire the conflict not to be solved. This conflict is not nearly as complicated to solve as they present it in the mainstream media and the think thanks/analyses world of "Middle East affairs" that exist worldwide. More than 50 years down the road we are still no nearer to a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict than we were in the late 1940s. How is that possible? Why can't we solve this stupid regional conflict?

Who is keeping the conflict alive?

2) The function of oil, weapons, and the US Dollar in the Middle East conflict

There is a view in the mainstream media that assumes the only concern the western nations have in the Middle East is for Arabs and Jews to kiss and make up. Yet after all their years of being involved in peace-making, how come there isn't any peace?

Because peace is not good business for them. What is important is maintaining the supremacy of the US dollar in world markets, recycling petrodollars to earn profits from the oil industry, and the sale of military products to the oil-rich Arab regimes. The unwritten agreement that the US has with the ruler of the oil states is that the oil will be priced in US dollars, and in return the US will protect them.

While Fox and CNN never discusses this issue, it is imperative for the strength of the US dollar that oil is priced only in US currency. When oil is sold in US dollars, countries around the world need to maintain a certain level of US currency in the reserves of their central bank to finance their oil purchases. OPEC is a cartel created by the US specifically for this purpose.

At the end of 2000, the Bank for International Settlements estimates world dollar reserves of $1.45 trillion, or 76% of the total world reserves of $1.09 trillion.
If oil was priced in other currencies, most countries would have little need to stockpile dollars, and thus all the currency the US government has printed over the years would be of value only in the US. This would flood the country with dollars and cause huge inflation. In addition, current and future trade and current account deficits would no longer be financed by the foreigners who purchase American Treasury bills and other US-dominated debt instruments. In other words, the US would no longer be an economic superpower.

In a brilliant essay on this subject entitled A Macroeconomic and Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth, economist William Clark wrote in January 2003:

The Federal Reserves greatest nightmare is that OPEC will switch from a dollar standard to a euro standard. Iraq actually made this switch. The real reason the Bush administration wants a puppet government in Iraq or more importantly, the reason why the corporate-military-industrial network wants a puppet government in Iraq is so that it will revert back to a dollar standard.
Others have come to the same conclusion as this issue relates to other regions in the world. . On June 18th, 2003, the publisher of the Venezuelan economic on-line journal, Veheadline.com, Roy Carson, wrote:

"A move by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias to replace the US$ with the Euro is seen as upsetting Washington more than when Iraq's Saddam Hussein started using the Euro for oil transactions last November ... precipitating the US-led action to invade Iraq. CIA and other intelligence organizations, including Britain's MI5, now fear that the next step is that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is about to switch to Euros ... the immediate effect would be a massive devaluation, perhaps sparking of domino-effect devaluations worldwide in US$-related foreign reserves and foreign debt calculations. With a massive budget deficit, the United States is running scared of latest intelligence that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is on the brink of converting to the Euros and the opinion held by many OPEC ministers is that the conversion is an inevitability ... the only question left is WHEN? Arab sources claim that Euro conversion across the Middle and Far East is a rational step to counteract the United States' capacity to "wage further illegal wars (a.k.a. State-sponsored terrorism)" around the world. A significant step in this direction is that Iran is contemplating switching to the Euro and, as a result, is the latest object of United States undiplomatic interference ... an intelligence sources says "they are stimulating opposition forces, making covert threats ... the next step is destabilization and quasi-liberation warfare under the pretext of promoting US-style democracy but essentially aimed at maintaining the US dollar as a global transaction currency."

The goal of the foreigners is to keep the oil flowing to western economies at a relatively low price so as not to harm the profits the elite oil companies earn from refining and marketing petroleum products, and ensuring that this oil remains priced in US dollars. To do that, foreigners have to prop up undemocratic and corrupt regimes (i.e., Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman, UAE, Qatar and Bahrain) so they will continue to serve foreign interests. In return, these countries keep the price of oil relatively low, keep the oil priced in US dollars, and never move upstream in the petroleum production process so as to compete with foreign oil companies.
The other unwritten law is that a certain amount of the oil revenues earned by the oil-rich states must be spent on the purchase of weapons. In 2002, Arab governments in the Middle East spent $52 billion on their military forces, of which $18 billion was for purchases from foreign countries. Arab countries devote 8%-11% of their national incomes to defense (23% of all government expenditures). (Yahya Sadowski, Guns or Butter, p.3). In the past decade, Saudi Arabia alone has spent over $100 billion on weapons. According to the Federation of American Scientists, in the decade after the Gulf War (1991-2001) the US sold more than $43 billion worth of weapons, equipment and military construction projects to Saudi Arabia, and $16 billion more to Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia alone imports about $15 billion worth of weapons each year.

Instead of using this wealth for building an economic infrastructure throughout the region, it is wasted on arms. The rest of the oil revenues (after basic government expenditures are met) are deposited in western banks as the private property of the corrupted Arab leaders. This benefits both the leaders and the large western banking interests. This process is called recycling petrodollars. As much of that wealth winds up in banks controlled by the foreign elite, this is another way that foreigners profit from the continued tension in the Middle East.
Another activity of the foreigners is to sell massive amounts of military hardware and technology to Arab dictators like Saddam Hussein and then, years later, when the dictator doesn't do what the foreigners want, the dictator becomes a threat to regional stability and an expensive (to the public at large, not to the arms industry) military invasion is suddenly required to contain him. When the smoke clears, nobody points a finger at the foreigners, accusing them of arming the dictator in the first place.

As no Arab country has a military industry, all weapons in the region are imported. If the western nations were truly interested in bringing peace to the Middle East, they would have placed a moratorium on arms sales to the region decades ago. Instead, they sell tens of billions worth of military hardware every year to the unstable regimes of the region. So the entities that are sending special envoys to "help the two sides make peace" are at the same time the main providers of weapons to the region.

Somehow, this contradiction is never exposed.

This is where the Palestinian-Israeli conflict serves its purpose. Keeping the conflict alive means a never-ending moral crusade can be carried out by both Arabs and Jews, each blaming the other for keeping the conflict festering, each pointing fingers at the other side rather than at the foreigners.

Is it merely a coincidence that there is vast oil reserves in the Middle East, while at the same time the region is home to a seven-decade-long conflict? If there were no oil, would there have been an Arab-Israeli conflict?

As long as the Arabs and Jews are blaming each other, the foreigners' role will go unnoticed- as will their profits.

3) What function does Israel serve?

The foreigners need a local, regional conflict presented in moral terms so that the peoples of the region will not pay attention to their real interests in the Middle East, such as oil and arms sales. That reason alone considering how vital maintaining the status quo is to the foreigners is enough for them to keep the conflict simmering.

Now, if you want to create and sustain a conflict, you need two sides. Israel is one of the participants, and that is its major role as far as the foreigners are concerned. This explains why, no matter how angry the US may get at Israel, it will never weaken Israels geo-strategic position and put the Arabs in a position where they could actually defeat Israel. It isn't concern for Israel's safety that motivates the western nations; it is their concern for the safety of their own vested interests.

Despite what Israelis and American Jews may believe, US aid is not given to Israel because the US identifies with the Jewish state or has pledged to safeguard Israel's security. That is merely another cover story.

As for why the US provides military aid to Israel, Middle East scholar, Professor Stephen Zunes of the University of San Francisco, claims: this aid is little more than an American subsidy to U.S. arms manufacturers, considering that the majority of it must be used to buy weapons from the U.S. Moreover, arms to Israel increase demand for weaponry in the Arab states. The Israelis announced back in 1991 that they supported the idea of a freeze in Middle East arms transfers. It was the United States that rejected it.